...if the history of the last 100 years is any guide, atheists and rigid secularists murdered and oppressed more people than any of the world's religions over the last 100 years.

Hmm. I'm rather dubious of this stat unless we're relying on the "well, if he murdered all those people, he really wasn't a Christian" crutch. Hitler was Catholic who hated atheists.

The only mass murderers I can think of offhand who were atheist were the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao, but I'd wager most of those who carried out their brutalities were Orthodox Catholics (with the enthusiastic support of their Church, which was much more concerned about its institutional survival than a few million murders) or Confucian. And even Mao often expressed admiration for religious figures, including Jesus, and understood that religion offered spiritual comfort for the poor and sick.

Hitler was Catholic who hated atheists.

Nope. Go pick up a copy of Hitler's Table Talk, the transcripts of countless private conversations Hitler had with his top echelon of supporters and staff.

He publicly claimed to be a Catholic. Privately, he considered Christianity a terrorist religion, a perversion of the Jews, and a religion of "martyrs and faggots." He made it very clear that he wanted no one in his circle who was religiously faithful, that his goal was to substitute a quasi-mythological view of Germany and the race for other religions, and that people in his elite forces should also be discouraged from having anything to do with Christianity.

The only mass murderers I can think of offhand who were atheist were the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao...

...and Pol Pot and Mengistu and Lenin and quite a few other Marxists and pseudo-Marxists whose body count added up to 100 million people dead in the 20th Century.

....but I'd wager most of those who carried out their brutalities were Orthodox Catholics...

Where on Earth would you get such a notion? Mao and Stalin murdered Christians by the millions, and imprisoned many more solely for the thoughtcrime of believing in Christ, James.

Given how they teach in schools and universities about religion, most particularly Christianity's record, I'm not surprised people think things like this. And, we still haven't coming to grips with the number of oppressive, mass-murdering secular states of the world in this society, either.

Secularism is no magic bullet for a better world.

I don't know how things work in the US, as I live in the UK. Here, religious faith is in decline. Attendances at church consist mostly of older people and most people express no religious views whatsoever.

Nevertheless, while at a state school, I was forced to attend morning assemblies every school day from 1983 to 1987 in which a Christian message was put forward. I never once believed it, but because of this constant drip feed, I did sometimes wonder whether as a consequence of my inability to believe it, I would be tortured incessantly after my death. It has taken some time for me to erase the doubt. What a revolting notion - people being tortured for eternity because they couldn't believe something.

That is why I attack Christianity. Because it attacked me first.

I would say, rather, that you were attacked by your elders who were more interested in keeping students controlled than in actually teaching them anything. Force-feeding ideas to children because of "tradition," or because it supposedly kept the little ones in line, is a problem not confined to Christianity.

Ok, Dean I am game. Name the positive things that Christianity has done for us?

Much of the criticism of Christianity is actually criticism of the Catholic Church, which in my opinion is entirely justified. The Catholic Church and its agents from the Pope on down have been responsible for a great deal of evil in the last 2000 years.

Christianity (as it has been organised) a postive force? Um, that is a bit harder to prove. Being anti-organised Christianity is not the same as being anti-Christian. There is a big difference. It was not the religion that killed all those Jews, heretics, witches, pagans and mid-wives, it was "the Church" under it's inquisition and the witchfynders of Protestinism.

Individual Christians are generally not the problem, the problem is when they get organised into large groupings. Then its mentality of the mob and trouble starts.

If someone says that the Judeo-Christian ethic has been a positive influence on the West, I would agree.

Forcing religious doctrine onto juvenile minds is one of the worst things religion has ever done to itself -- and this is a practicing Catholic talking.

A mind should not be required to accept that which it cannot yet evaluate. The insistence by altogether too many that children should be required to adopt their parents' religious beliefs, reinforced by a religious school system and/or a swaddling ecclesiastical community, is responsible for more persons turning irrationally against religion than any other force I can name.

Irrationally? Yes. I'm talking about people who excoriate religion out of sheer pique, because it was forced on them when young. That's irrational. It confuses the authoritarian indoctrination they received with the actual teachings of their faith, which in all fairness ought to be evaluated separately from the behavior of their parents and surrounding community.

We concede quite readily that there are many things for which the juvenile body or mind is not ready. Religious doctrine is one such thing. Religion is not for children; they're simply not ready to handle it.

Now all you adult apostates who scream and stamp your feet about having been forced to go to religious instruction and attend services once a week can kwitcherbitchin' and finish growing up. You're not toddlers any more. You can jolly well learn to separate the behavior of a group of misguided adults from the doctrines of a school of thought -- even a religious school of thought.

And the crowd goes wild!!! I think Francis has nailed it there.

I have to snicker when I hear people prattling on about "Christian mobs" here in 2003. The closest thing to a Christian mob that I've seen in 43 years on this planet is a Promise Keepers hoedown, and we've all seen the newsclips of the death and destruction they've rained down on on unsuspecting communities during their rampages.

Anyway...too deep of a subject for my shallow mind. Carry on...

As soon as so-called Christians start to practice what they preach and preach and preach and preach, I'll start respecting them. People who live by their personal faith and treat other human being with respect aren't the issue here. People who want to subvert our free society and our government with pseudo-Christian fascism are the issue. As was mentioned above, I attack fundamentalism because fundamentalism attacked me. It's an issue of survival. If you don't believe me, you don't have all the facts which, because they are so readily available, I will not bother to enumerate here.

You know, I bet you could find a long list of benefits that were brought about by Communism. But would that make Communism okay? These arguments are all so convenient.

I'm with Andrew on this one Dean. I want to know what greater good the christian faith has accomplished.

Christianity is an intolerant faith, it teaches that there is only one true way, one truth, and one true god, by simple extension it teaches that everyone who is not christian is wrong and therefore doomed.

Just where does that leave the significant portion of the world population that is not christian Dean, other than ultimately languishing eternally in a pit of fire somewhere after their death?

Ironically enough, when we try to force our adult way of thinking on children, it is actually and precisely the juvenile mind ONLY that can accept the things of God:

Matthew 18:3-4 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

So it's curious to see in a way, when adults try to force children to be like THEM, Christ tells us that we instead should be more like children.

And in regards to evaluating what we are taught, how do you evaluate a Deity that has no beginning or end, to which the laws of physics and nature have no application?

I've made my arguments on this point many, many times; but I took the time to sum them all up here for anyone who's interested. The main point: Christians aren't all the same, and I'm against the bad/fake/totalitarian ones, not the good/real/sane ones.

Actually, if you study the evil things done in Christ's name over the last two-thousand years, you generally find that the perpetrators had other reasons than their faith for doing what they did. The Inquisition is an excellent example. Who accused suspects to the inquisitors? The local secular authorities. Who benefited when the accused were imprisoned and killed? The local secular authorities--who got to confiscate the victim's property.

This is one of the main reasons I support the separation of Church and State--when divorced from politics, the Church has some hope of remaining pure. When married to politics, the Church has no such hope.

Stageleft says: "Christianity is an intolerant faith, it teaches that there is only one true way, one truth, and one true god, by simple extension it teaches that everyone who is not christian is wrong and therefore doomed."

Jesus indeed called himself "the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the father except through me?" Why would I be a Christian unless I believed this to be true? And how, believing this to be true, can I not believe that contradictory propositions are false? And how does my so believing have any effect whatsoever on your eternal fate? Because that's your argument--that because I believe this, you are doomed.

It is not intolerance on my part to believe that you are mistaken. It would be intolerance on my part if I believed that you should be sold into slavery or murdered or otherwise oppressed because you disagree with me.

This distinction might not be clear to you, but I promise you the Christians in Sudan who are being enslaved and murdered on a daily basis understand it quite well.

Stageleft, you want a positive that Christianity accomplished? Try the eradication of slavery from most of the world (sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East excluded). The British Empire began, in the 19th Century, sending out its fleet to enforce its edict that slavery was illegal. The Brits seized ships that carried slaves, under any flag, and shelled some recalcitrant cities into freeing their slaves. The other European powers followed the British lead, and by the 1920's the only places slavery was legal were in the Middle East and the furthest backwaters of Africa.

Do you know why the Brits spent ships, blood, and gold to free those people? Their evangelical Christians demanded that a Christian government must not only cease trading in human beings, but strive to eradicate it everywhere.

PS, almost ALL executions of 'witches', Jews and other 'heretics' were carried out by secular governments. Part of the reason that London became a center of commerce in the 17th Century was because the Jews from Spain fled there, and were not persecuted.

It's interesting to know the Puritans were the first to introduce the idea of separation of church and state, though not for the reasons we're familair with today. They were originally called separatists, and their belief regarding separation from state had to do with anti-royalism. How far we've come since then. They'd be spinning in their graves if they knew how an idea they first espoused was being used today.

Reading many of the anti-Christian comments found here is deeply depressing. Living in the loftiest branches of a culture whose very roots are embedded within and anchored by Christian ideals, writers such as James J., John K. and David Y. spit on that tradition for what appear to be purely selfish reasons.

With respect to the question of "what good has Christianity ever done?" I am appalled at the historical ignorance that this implies. Eric nails an important one regarding the eradication of slavery but there are deeper currents as well. Indeed, our very world view as free, autonomous and worthy individuals is rooted in Judeo-Christian foundations. Consider freedom, autonomy and individual worth in turn.

With respect to Freedom, it is base human nature to desire the subjugation of others to one's own worldly desires or that of one's family, group or clan. Christianity has not only provided an unassailable foundation upon which we can defend the ideal of the rights of man in the face of this selfish nature, it has coupled this moral clarity with a compelling, universalist message of peace, hope and forgiveness. That is *why* people are drawn to Christianity. The most compelling example of the Church’s role in reifying this message is found in the work of John Wesley and the Methodists in pushing England to outlaw slavery. Even before the rise of Methodism and the abolitionist movement, the Church had a nearly 1800 year history of struggling with and opposing this practice (per a piece I read recently but for which I cannot find a link). Can any other organization make this claim? No.

Do Christians take a radically libertarian view of freedom? They do not; freedom is understood within the context of a divine law that very, very few Christians can reconcile with some of the freedoms now considered untouchable in America such as abortion and pornography. If you think that Christian influences are therefore “extremist” or that Christians are thereby akin to “Nazis” then I suggest that you have little hope of understanding Christian politics and even less qualification to comment intelligently upon the matter. You are simply defending what you want now, for reasons having little to do with the social good.

With respect to Autonomy, consider the motivating impulse behind the Reformation and the subsequent development of the Protestant Churches: the clarification of the *individual’s* relationship to God. The essential insight of the Protestants – which I believe have been largely adopted by the Catholic Church in subsequent years in spirit if not form (I’m not Catholic) – was that grace and forgiveness was acquired by a disposition of the heart and not by “purchase” or “good works.” On a more practical plane, scratch at the surface of modern law and you’ll find an unmistakeably Christian view of personal autonomy. That is, the very idea of the rule of law is essentially Christian: the world as understood by Christians is governed at its root by God's law (or “natural” law) and not by the law of man. This translates very directly into the idea that no man is a law unto himself and that there are indeed “self-evident” human rights. Where have these ideals been written into a culture’s very founding documents? Where have these ideals been codified into law? Where have they reached their apogee? In the Christian West.

With respect to Individual Worth, is this not the very foundation of Christianity? Does it make sense to suppose that God would walk among humankind and suffer its worst debasements and wounds if he did not think each and every one of us worthy? The Christian message is that Jesus died for your deliverance. But look deeper and you can see the impact that this understanding of the world has had upon our history. For a concrete example, look upon the widespread literacy that resulted from the Reformation as people strove to read the Bible themselves. Consider how this, in turn, reinforced and reinvigorated the view that all individuals are valuable in and of themselves and the impact that this had upon the entire spectrum of our views of the rightful place man in society. Even predating the Reformation, note that while Greek ideals of democracy pre-dated Christianity, these ideals have taken root most deeply and unshakably in culturally Christian nations exactly because of the Christian belief in the worth of the individual (not to mention the deep cross-fertilization of early Christianity with Greek philosophy in the works, for example, of St. Augustine). In similar fashion, Protestant ideals concerning each person's right to understand God on his own terms led quite directly to the rise of an aggressively independent science. While science and religion *ended up* at loggerheads they did not *start out* that way. At the very root of our modern ideals of "science" as a sustained activity and cultural ideal, you will find the Christian seeking an understanding of God's laws.

And now…

How pedestrian that John K. observes that Christians fall short of their ideals. How dismally predictable that David Y feels that Christianity "attacked" him because he was "forced" to listen to appeals for forbearance, hope and Christian love. How utterly and ferociously ignorant is James J. to attribute Mao’s and Stalin’s mass genocides to “orthodox Catholics.”

Sorry guys, everyone *knows* that Christians have *always* fallen short of their ideals. Christians themselves generally spend a few minutes at least on Sundays making this point abundantly clear and asking for guidance in correcting their flaws. Do you do anything similar? Or is it good enough to just assume that, absent any power greater than yourself in the natural world, that you are already quite perfect?

Francis Porretto,

I hate to say this to you because you seem quite reasonable - but don't you realise how absurd this is:

"A mind should not be required to accept that which it cannot yet evaluate"

So, if this be true - what are we supposed to teach the kids? Kids must, if they are to be civilized, be taught the answers and only later be encouraged to ask the questions. Try to argue a kid into eating his veggies and going to bed on time and you're in for a long, long night...

Fortunately, my father wasn't going to have any of that nonsense - so I was raised Catholic. In the natural order of events, I became quite un-religious as I entered adulthood and only as I entered my 30's did I go back home to the Church...I followed perfectly Will Durant's progression: Belief, Unbelief, Understanding.

The problem with most of the anti-Christian posters here is that they have failed to come to an understanding - and they don't seem to want to understand.

As for the benefits of Christianity....

Well, such absurd and idiotic notions as power coming from the consent of the governed and that its just to overthrow a tyrant were first thought up by Christians..specifically, Catholic priests (in both cases, Jesuits). Ie, our very ideal of proper government and our justification for becoming an independent nation owes its genesis to Catholic thinking....

What a lot of critics fail to realise is that you cannot judge the actions of people of the past save by their own terms. A heretic being burned alive in 2003 would be an unimaginable horror - but in a time when a regicide was hung by the neck until nearly strangled, then cut down from the gallows, disembowelled, his entrails burned before his eyes and then his arms and legs tied to two horses which are then impelled to run in opposite directions? Given a choice, which way would you rather die? Burning alive, horrific as it was, at least wasn't as horrible and as drawn out painful as other forms of execution - not to mention the fact that for lesser crimes, you could have your tongue ripped out, your face branded and your nose slit.....the point here, dear people, is that it was a savage time; humanity was still, at the point, emerging from barbarism and had not yet arrived a point where, say, we not only rarely execute, but when we do we give the condemned 10 years post-trial to make his case for mercy and then if all else fails, we give him a lethal injection....in private, and his body is given honorable burial afterwards (not left on the gibbet until it rots away).

Now, contrast these ancient barbarities of our Christian ancestors, whose descendents lead the way in a lot of ways in the amelioration of these cruelties, with the modern barbarities of those convinced there is no God...in spite of asinine claims here that Catholics perpetrated Stalin's crimes (how, in a nation which was 90% Greek orthodox could there be enough Catholics to kill 40 million people is a bit beyond me....), it was modern, educated people who were heirs to centuries of human advancement and enlightenment who, had they just gone back to medieval barbarism, would have been at least halfway decent....

You'll not find in the annals of Christian crime such things as people being driven into howling wilderness and told to dig canals with their bare hands...no, that took enlightened, leftists to do that....in the 1930's, not in the 930's....

"Today is Sunday, and not a bad day to contemplate such things."

Heathen. I was brought up that Saturday was still the Sabbath in Real Christianity, whatever machinations the ancestors of the Papists (be sure the aspirate the p's in righteous fury) may have worked on the calendar. I'm not sure whether I want anything further to do with your kind.

That aside, you're right, but I doubt you'll convince anyone who doesn't agree already. I know that this isn't a new observation, but it's sad how many people go into fits of anthropological admiration for the folk wisdom and harmony with nature in African animist, pre-Columbian Mexican, and Confucianist systems--but who think the only thing worthy about Christianity is a few stained glass windows.

Christianity was not just at the forefront of ending slavery in the 19th century. Although it was that.

Christianity was a major tempering factor in the worst aspects of the Roman Empire. Some say Rome collapsed ultimately because it became Christian, because the Christians exerted such influence in damping down Roman cruelties. And by the way, for all that we romanticize (ha!) them, the Romans were an unbelievably cruel people, and not just because of the gladiator stuff either. Their normal way of conquering was to kill, and glorify the killing of, women, children, old men, the sick and the lame, by the tens of thousands, while enslaving tens of thousands more, as Standard Operating Procedure during countless conquests.

To move to more modern times, Christianity was at the forefront in ending child labor, in efforts to end domestic violence (despite feminist claims, Christian groups have been active in ending domestic violence and child abuse in America since at least the late 1700s). Christianity was at the forefront of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

And note that I do not weasel out and say that it was just "individual Christians" who were part of that. No, major Christian leaders and major Christian movements were part of all of the above.

Including, quite frequently, the much-reviled Catholic church. Which was also indispensible in the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Most of our values in terms of charity, mercy, and forgiveness here in the West have their roots in Christianity--and by extension, Judaism.

Even people who rail about the "evils" of the Catholic Church over the last 2000 years are off-base, because if you look at the evils of secular forces through that same time period, they're inevitably worse. The Inquisitors? Try reading what happened in non-religious torture chambers some time, they were worse. Catholics sometimes involving themselves in slaughter of non-Christians? Try reading what the Romans used to do to people, routinely, who resisted their will. Or what most Kings throughout the last 2000 years have done to people they didn't like or wanted to conquer.

What's increasingly apparent to me is that, here in the modern West, Christianity is held to a higher standard than any other religion or group. Furthermore, we consider it completely okay to say the most vile things about the Christian faith, and are actually surprised when someone says, "hey, wait a minute!"

There are 1.5-2 billion Christians in the world. If you think it's not okay to beat up on those other religions, you should not think it's okay to beat up on the Christian religion either. And if you're going to criticize, you ought to be fair enough to look at the actions of non-Christians by comparison--and not just this or that small group.

Was Judaism better? Ha! Read the Tanakh (the Old Testament). When they were in power, they were not a nice people. The Muslims? Let's not even go there. The Hindu and Buddhist faiths are full of bloody warmongering conquerers. So are the Shintoists.

Atheists? At least 100 million dead by their hand in the 20th century--and boy do they get defensive when you point it out.

If we're going to criticize Christianity for not living up to its ideals and for having terrible people who do terrible things in its name sometimes, let's be honest enough to hold others to the same standard, okay?

Dean,

Defensive? Not only that, but they apparantly lay the blame on the Catholic Church...

We can't win for losing; We stopped burning heretics at the stake and we got more protestants...now they bitch about Jerry Fallwell...hey, we did our best...whadda ya want? Burnt protestants, or protestants? Make up your mind, secularists!

"So, if this be true - what are we supposed to teach the kids? Kids must, if they are to be civilized, be taught the answers and only later be encouraged to ask the questions. Try to argue a kid into eating his veggies and going to bed on time and you're in for a long, long night..."

Oh, I don't know, Mr. Noonan, you could always tell the kids, "You'll do what you're told NOW, and you'll understand why LATER when you're ready for me to explain it to you." That's what my parents did, and I think it's exactly because of that approach that I didn't flip out when I started to question my religion at college.

As a corollary, we weren't taught that every little gesture had to be earnestly freighted with meaning. You didn't stop to think about how grateful you felt before you said, "Thank you," and so forth. Observing the forms wasn't enough to make you righteous--God looks on the heart, and all that good stuff--but it was enough to forestall a parental inquiry into your private thoughts, which I think provided enough incentive to behave well that it tided us over until we were ready to think critically about these things.

I think what we have here is a classic example of an all-or-nothing perspective on the merits of one's faith / philosophy / relationship choice. Nowhere in my comments do I "spit" on the entire Christian tradition or say that Christianity is evil qua Christianity; rather, that some people pervert their faith into something ugly and violent and totalitarian. Yet to criticize some Christians becomes, for some people, an attack on all Christians, who then circle the wagons and "stand up for their faith", right or wrong.

It's similar to people who overreact to criticism of, say, gay people: a criticism of some gay people for, say, promiscuity (which is a valid criticism) becomes a criticism of all gay people, and in response they get defensive rather than looking at the actual issues involved.

I know that most Christians accept that they're imperfect and fall short of the mark; yet there's that whole "mote in your eye / beam in my eye" thing, and when I see a bunch of protesters accosting just about any gay/lesbian gathering they can find with warnings of hellfire and damnation, I just see a big waving field of beams.

Dean,

Clearly, mixed evidence on Hitler's religiosity. Most of what I've seen indicates he was Catholic. See this, for example.

As to the Orthodox angle, it's just rather logical: the vast majority of the Russian citizens are/were religious. Ditto the Germans. Thus, those actually carrying out the atrocities were Christians.

The fact that gets overlooked so often in religious arguments is that religions are only as good as the people who practice them. Character -- the habit of doing what one knows is right regardless of whether one is supervised or not -- is different from faith. Faith can supply guideposts toward character, but as we've seen so often, that is no guarantee.

James:

As to the Orthodox angle, it's just rather logical: the vast majority of the Russian citizens are/were religious. Ditto the Germans. Thus, those actually carrying out the atrocities were Christians.

Let's stipulate, for the moment, that the "vast majority" of either group were religious, despite a lack of any evidence. Has it occurred to you that some selection criteria (implicit or explicit) might have worked in forming the elite that committed these atrocities?

Consider this "rewording" of your statement:

As to the Shiite angle, it's just rather logical: the vast majority of the Iraqi citizens are/were Shiite. Thus, those actually carrying out the atrocities were Shiite.

By your same "logic", this must be true as well, eh?

When Christianity pulls these kinds of revisionist stunts, we are (rightly) ridiculed for it. (See, for example, the "they weren't true Christians" argument regarding the Inquisition.) Do you really expect any less in return?

James,

Your logic simply doesn't hold. To say "the vast majority of the Russian citizens are/were religious" and to then blame the genocide committed in these nations on religion shows far more about your bias than it does about the nature of religion.

First, the crimes in both cases were sponsored and largely committed by the intelligentsia. In Soviet Russia, this intelligentsia was, by its own pronouncement, atheist. Do you think the Germans halted the gas chambers on Sundays because so many of the guards and executioners had to attend mass?

Second, with respect to the form of your argument, I could make a parallel argument regarding hair color. Since, the majority of Russians/Germans are blond then obviously "blondness" leads to genocide.(Actually, with the Nazi's, you could find more support this argument than yours).

Third, you provide no actual support for your argument that Christianity itself was to fault for the behaviors of the Nazis/Communists - you appear to believe that we'll accept it just because you have observed a correlation.

Finally, by the form of your argument, the majority of the victims must have been "religious" as well. Why does this not argue equally against your claim?

Indeed, why not just admit that you are wrong? You wouldn't be telling *us* anything we didn't already know.

Dean,

You say "If we're going to criticize Christianity for not living up to its ideals and for having terrible people who do terrible things in its name sometimes, let's be honest enough to hold others to the same standard, okay?"

This is really the point around which all honest debate centers, isn't it? What is so disheartening about so much of what passes for debate and discussion is that so few participants seem to transcend "here is how I feel because I'm a Republican|Democrat|Christian|Atheist" mode.

Bush isn't a "Nazi" because, well, he acts like a Nazi (he doesn't). He's a "nazi" because I'm a democrat and I want to descredit him so we can get someone in the White House with a "D" next to his name.

Where once I believed that matters of political importance could be decided by rational discourse, it appears that we very seldomly transcend simple partisan catfights. Combine this with a failing educational system that often substitutes feeling for truth and that is built on the pillars of guiltless leftism, and it is easy to grow weary of the battle.

"I think what we have here is a classic example of an all-or-nothing perspective on the merits of one's faith / philosophy / relationship choice. Nowhere in my comments do I "spit" on the entire Christian tradition or say that Christianity is evil qua Christianity; rather, that some people pervert their faith into something ugly and violent and totalitarian. Yet to criticize some Christians becomes, for some people, an attack on all Christians, who then circle the wagons and "stand up for their faith", right or wrong."

I agree with that, and I find it interesting that some of these same people tend to bash Muslims for having exactly the same reaction.

(Please note: I think that 'circle the wagons' attitude is a bad one no matter who is doing it.)

Whew! There is soooooo much b.s. to wade through here and so many examples of immature reactionary thought, so prevelant today on both extreme left and right. Come on! Hitler a Catholic? Hitler said and claimed things for expediency and for personal gain. Any further discussion of Hitler being Christian or following Christian ideals is silly and useless.
How can people of such intelligence as demonstrated here not be able to separate the term Christian from the concept of following Christian ideals? Ok, so who were the Christians during the abolitionist period in the mid 1800's in the U.S. and during the civil rights movements of the 1950's-60's? Both sides were nominally Christian, but it is obvious to any with a brain whose ideals more closely reflected those of Christ (and even those more corrupt mere humans that have followed, but who have not always lived up to them). Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Lenin, and other totalitarian communists, fascists and nationalists have obviously led the way in the atrocities of the last century. Those Christians involved in major political activity, including our presidents have seldom done so in the name of religion, at least for over a hundred years, though a few have given lip service to Christianity in the process.
Let's face it, Christians are just easy and convenient targets for those who are not bound by any ideals they might be called on to defend. It is so easy to attack someone with a belief system when you can dismiss out-of-hand any part of their arguments that mentions their beliefs-a long-standing tactic of non-Christians, usually accompanied by derision. Misguided Christians have done the same, but there it is again: Christians, churches, or political movements dominated by Christians do not constitute Christianity!

Somebody help me out here....I'm tired of having the last word!!!! (see 'are you a liberal?' on home page or whereever(?))